The Evolution of Macro- and Micro-Time Relations in Stockhausen's Recent Music

Abstract

In 1970 Karlheinz Stockhausen composed his most determinate score in nearly a decade: Mantra for two pianists, a work which marks a major turning-point in the composer's style. The most evident distinction marking the new phase which begins with Mantra and extends to the present time, is the use of melodies-which is to say, the repetition of successions of pitch and duration relationships-a thematic surface element which the composer had carefully avoided since 1951, favoring instead continually changing relationships. In the composer's own words: not the same figures in an ever-changing light, but rather: different figures in the same light, which permeates everything.' It would, however, be entirely wrong to conclude that Stockhausen has broken with his past, as may be seen by even a superficial glance at the works since Mantra. Rather, he seems to be gathering up as many threads as possible from all of his previous works, including some which he had suppressed at the time of composition. Most notable is Formel (1951), which was rehabilitated (together with several other early pieces) when Stockhausen realized, after having composed Mantra, how similar its techniques were to those of the 1951 work (the relationship between Formel and some of its latter-day descendents is dealt with in Toop 1976a). This renewed interest in his projects of the 'fifties was also a natural outgrowth of his return to more exact specification of rhythmic relationships, after the increasingly subjective treatment of durations in the works of the 'sixties. In 1974 Stockhausen composed Inori, in which the chromatic tempo-scale described in his 1956 article, ...wie die Zeit vergeht....,2 reappeared. This tempo-scale had completely vanished in his works composed after the writing of the article, but since 1974 has appeared with increasing frequency.3 In fact, nearly every detail of Stockhausen's present rhythmic technique is described, explicity or implicitly, in wdZv, now a classic of twentieth-century rhythmic theory and Stockhausen's most celebrated and controversial theoretical work. But to speak of Stockhausen's rhythmic techniques apart from his treatment of pitch is meaningless. The very point of wdZv was to resolve